All I Can Do is Write About It
by Skysalla
Summary: Response for the ungen summer fire challenge: It all started with a fire. Spoils through season 4


This is a response to the ungen summer challenge - It all started with a fire.

Thanks to Jenn for encouraging me and betaing.

Spoils through Season 4 - Monster at the End of this Book

I own nothing.

-`-`-`-`-`-`

"_Hey Sammy."_

_A dark blotch appeared next to Sam's head. John wasn't sure if it was an old stain in the fabric he hadn't noticed before, or something seeping up from under the sheets. _

_He reached his hand out, curiously touching the foreign substance. John's time in the Marines had given him plenty of exposure to blood, but nothing explained what it would be doing in his six month old's nursery. Another drop fell and landed on his hand with a gentle splat. He breathed a sigh of relief when it dropped. There was no way blood was falling from the ceiling. It had to be something else._

_John turned, confused, and looked up to the ceiling. Expecting a leaky pipe, maybe something Dean had thrown up there that had gotten stuck and was just now slowly dripping back down._

_The sight of his bleeding wife had been the last thing he had expected._

"_No." John stumbled, falling to the floor as he watched the fire explode from behind his wife. "Mary!"_

_The fire crackled and sizzled in the small nursery, the heat singeing the newly hung sports-themed drapery. It started so suddenly. John wasn't sure how Mary had ended up on the ceiling or why she was bleeding, but he knew instinctively to rescue the defenseless baby in the wooden crib first._

_Training had told him: "don't think, act." So he jumped to his feet, scooping the wailing infant from the crib as he darted for the open doorway. He could feel the scalding heat against his back as he ran from the fire, from Mary._

_John rushed into the hallway with Sam, unsure where to keep the infant protected from the flames. Dean appeared from his room, the four-year-old's eyes still bleary with sleep. It was then that John knew the safest place for his youngest. He thrust the bundle into Dean's arms, his oldest taking Sam without question._

"Damn. What kind of a horrible person am I?"

Chuck Shurley pushed back from his computer screen and trod to the kitchen for another beer. His slipper caught again on the broken tile that he swore was out to get him

"I get a new set of characters and the first thing I do is kill their mother in a horrific house fire that everyone witnesses?" He pulled open the fridge, the shelves attesting to his empty bank account. "You Winchester boys better bring home some bacon." There was only a single beer left, which Chuck liberated as he slammed the door shut.

He made his way back to the junk covered desk, dropping into the chair in front of his computer. With a sigh, he dragged his hand across his face in exasperation as he skimmed the afternoon's work.

"I can't believe I wrote this crap."

The fire part needed redoing. Chuck hovered his mouse over the words that scrawled down the screen, with a quick double click and push of a button they were all gone. He took another swig of his beer before poising his fingers over the keyboard once more, his eyes falling half closed as he recalled the strangely vivid dream he had just hours ago.

_John entered the room in a panic, expecting to find the worst after the scream. Sam lay in the crib, his eyes wide but peaceful. "Hey Sammy."_

Chuck's stomach grumbled, the stale beer he was drinking evidently not enough to satisfy it. "You guys stay right there. I'll be back for you."

He shucked out of his bathrobe and grabbed an old coat, pausing only to shake the dust off before slipping it on. It was hard to remember the last time he'd worn it, or even the last time he'd stepped out of the house.

The grocery store was a fifteen-minute drive, and with each car Chuck passed he couldn't help but wonder what kind of car John Winchester should drive.

_John carried the boys away from the house, the red-hot fire engulfing what used to be his son's nursery. The large black car was sitting in the street, the reflection of the fire clear on its pristine hood as John ran towards it._

Chuck slammed on his brakes, barely stopping in time to prevent an accident. Never before had his characters actions come to him with such clarity. As he eyed the vehicle in front of him, a 2002 Impala, an idea struck him. "How bout an old Impala Mr. Winchester?"

-`-`-`-`

The last time Chuck had talked to his mother, she'd threatened to come out and live with him if he didn't start taking care of himself. For this reason Chuck found himself wandering the produce section, trying to figure out how one determined if fruit was, in fact, ripe.

He paused in front of the plums, about to pick one up when a thought suddenly struck him. "Sammy doesn't like plums."

"Can I help you with anything sir?" The gravely voice disturbed Chuck form his musings on plums and he turned to find a store employee. The man's dark blue tie hung slightly askew from a long day at work.

_Castiel stood in the corner of the room, watching as the shadow figure moved in to stand over the infant's crib. He was not able to interfere. _

_No matter how many times he witnessed this moment in time, it always struck him that this small babbling infant would grow to be a man whose choices would shape the future of the world._

"_John, is he hungry?" Mary stood in the doorway and Castiel could see in her the unexplainable love she had for her children. The love that showed just how much she was made in his Father's image. The same love that drove her oldest son._

"_Shhhhh." _

"_Okay." She turned away from the doorway, unknowingly leaving her youngest with the demon. He watched as the child's life was altered forever by Azazel's blood dripping into his mouth, the fate of the small family set into motion with that single action. _

_He rewound the time, much like he knew humans were able to do with their pre-recorded audio and video devices. When he stopped, Azazel was gone._

_A noise in the hall drew his attention away from the crib. "Come on, let's say good night to your brother." The light clicked on, and although Castiel knew they were oblivious to his presence, he stepped to the side of the room anyway._

"'_Night Sam." The young boy leaned over the edge of the crib, planting a kiss on the infant's forehead. This was the child destined to save them. This was the child to whom untold pain and suffering would fall._

"_G'night love." Although he knew the child before him would grow up to be the man he knew, he had a hard time envisioning the innocent child as the only person to save them all. It had always amazed him who his Father chose to carry out His will._

"_Hey Dean." The larger man appeared in the doorway, his voice lighting up the face of the toddler before him._

"_Daddy!" Temporarily forgetting his mother and brother, the young blonde ran across the room, throwing himself into the arms of his father._

_Castiel could see even now the seeds that would grow into the devotion this child had to the man holding him. It was a devotion he knew would lead the child to nearly lose himself as he followed his father's orders. For a human, Dean had taken it to the extreme, forgoing his own desires in an effort to please his father and keep him close. It was a decision Castiel was familiar with._

_He paused the time around him, soaking in the moments of normalcy. The final night of peace for the small family, the last night of normal the child would ever see._

"Uh, sir? D'ya need anything?"

Chuck shook his head adamantly, not bothering to watch the employee head towards the back room. His hands rapidly flew over the pockets of his jacket, turning up empty.

"No wait!" The employee turned back to him with an irritated smile. But Chuck didn't care if he was keeping the high school drop out from a smoking break. "Paper?"

The guy pulled on his already askew tie, almost in disbelief that Chuck had taken him up on the offer of help. "Uh, aisle six."

He barely made it to the paper when the next flash hit him. Chuck tore into the first package he found, a Lisa Frank notebook, and began scribbling the words as they flashed through his mind.

_Castiel was not hurt by the flames as they licked the interior of the nursery. He watched from the window as the young Dean ran from the house, clutching the infant to his chest._

_It was almost as if that single action cemented in the older child's brain a responsibility for his younger sibling that he would carry with him the rest of his life. It had always intrigued Castiel, the devotion humans had for one another. Particularly when he knew the amount of pain that they could cause, and in the case of these two boys, the amount they would endure for the sake of each other._

_As the fire destroyed the building around him, Castiel knew that, with the events of this evening, Dean's devotion to his brother was solidified as absolute._

-`-`-`-`

Chuck wasn't sure where the flashes were coming from or what was cueing them, but he quickly learned not to be without paper. The words would flood him in near complete prose, the descriptions crisp and clear as if he was standing within the world of his imagination.

"Mr. Edlund?"

He looked up from the doodle he'd drawn on the paper; some sort of necklace. The dark pencil lines made the face with the strange horns stand out sharply on the page.

"Mr. Walker will see you now."

He smiled to the receptionist on the way to the office, not caring about the futility of giving her his penname.

"_Homeland Security? That's pretty illegal, even for us."_

Phil Walker remained seated behind his desk when Chuck walked in. "Chuck, I'm not even sure what to say about this book." Chuck sank in to the seat, eying the manuscript of Supernatural on the desk in front of him. "As your friend, I love it. But as your editor…"

Chuck sighed, he should have known this was coming. "What's wrong with it?"

"The characters are great, but you've got too much going on. I mean, apocalypse, end of the world…angels?" Phil kicked his feet up on the edge of his desk. "Do you know how much money we lost on Jeremy and his apocalyptic novel, 'Charlie'?"

Chuck remembered trying to talk Jeremy out of that one. He had been forced not only to endure the pitch, but the manuscript as well. "Jeremy wrote a book about homicidal unicorns ending the world with their powers of naptime."

"_There's no such thing as unicorns?"_

Phil snorted, "Biggest piece of crap I ever read."

"Supernatural is about real people, human beings. They're relatable. It's not about unicorns."

"No Chuck. It's not." Phil pushed the manuscript across the desk. "I want you to go back. Take out all this angel and apocalypse nonsense, you aren't writing the Bible here."

He looked at his manuscript on the desk between them, the strange collection of vivid dreams and waking hallucinations. "T-take it out?"

"Yes, and do something about this Jessica character. I mean, she just lets Sam leave?"

Chuck's mind flashed back to the dream he'd had weeks before of Jessica pinned to the ceiling in much the same way Mary had been. He hadn't wanted to kill her. Sam deserved that little piece of normalcy in his life.

Chuck played hesitantly with the frayed edge of his shirt. He couldn't believe he was about to suggest this. "I could…kill her…?"

Phil sat up, dropping his feet from the desk. Chuck could tell from the light in this friend's eyes he no longer had an option on the issue. "That's a great idea!"

He recalled Sam's horror at finding her on the ceiling. How Dean had barely managed to pull his brother from yet another fire. It was cruel but it was literary symmetry.

As long as Dean was there to pull Sam from the funk that was sure to ensue with the death of Jessica then Chuck knew it would work out. Dean was Sam's protector and even if he had to cut out all the apocalypse parts, the relationship would still be clear.

Chuck snapped out of his musings just in time to catch the end of Phil's proposal. "-I'll give you a book deal for three more books. If those do well we can have more. We'll turn Sam and Dean into a series."


End file.
